


What Brings Us Here

by fojee



Category: Japanese Drama, Samurai Sensei
Genre: 1st person pov, M/M, RPS - Freeform, alternate POV, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 18:56:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5386784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fojee/pseuds/fojee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the Bakamatsu era of Japan, two warriors died, one committing seppuku in jail, the other of an unknown assassin. Then they woke up in the Heisei era, and find each other again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Brings Us Here

**Author's Note:**

> I'm usually leery of writing rpf of any kind, and 1st person as well. Guess I'm breaking all my rules for this fic. Sorry Japanese historians. Blame the cuteness that is Kamiki Ryunosuke. Written after episode six.

_Takechi_

When I held the blade to my own flesh, I was full of fear. Not of death, no. But fear for those I would leave behind. My comrades who needed my strength to bolster their own. My wife who had half of my heart. The battles left undone. 

The thought of abandoning them broke my heart. 

Ah. 

Maybe this was what Aza felt when he left. I, too, have been abandoned, you see. By a man I once considered the holder of the other half of my heart. I fought with him at my back, and trusted him above all to see the truth of the matter, and the way through the tangled field to the other side. He was a visionary, the man called Sakamoto Ryouma. He always looked me in the eye, and always told me when I'm being foolish. To a leader of men, that was an invaluable gift. 

I always listened to him, but I always followed my own path. And eventually, we parted ways. He was lordless now, a lonely existence for anyone but especially for a samurai. I worried about him, too. But I'm glad he's not here today. I'm glad he won't see me commit seppuku. He hated this act, thought it a great waste. He would have scolded me until my ears were red if he had been here. 

And he would have avenged me. Maybe he still would. 

\---

_Sakamoto_

Assassination only sounded romantic in the stories. In reality, it was a stupid death, unheroic, without even a chance for honour. The ones with the knives that came for me dressed in shadow, sent by enemies, maybe by friends. A foolish death, best left unremembered. 

But then again, at that point, I was tired of all the bloodshed. Did any of it really change things? All those lives lost. All those battles, the ground littered with blood and broken blades. And then those battles at sea, where you could throw an entire army overboard and the waves would just swallow them whole. So much death.

Did I really change things?

Is it strange to wonder about that now? After everything I have done, after everything I have tried to do. Did it impact this world I live in now?

History is full of causes and effects, but it's also littered with coincidences, with accidents, with roads that go nowhere, with lives that end just like that.

When I died, why did I end up here?

\---

_Takechi_

I couldn't dispel the idea that this is all a dream. That everything could disappear in the blink of an eye, just as I closed my eyes in Tosa and woke up in this era. I did what I could, but I felt lost and adrift. Until I met him again.

Aza. The man who had left me. He looked so strange with those black spectacles, and the foreign clothes. But he moved the same, fought with the same grace and deadliness. I should have recognized him immediately.

He soon became my anchor, the only thing that made sense in this crazy, new world. I grabbed a hold of his arm, and because he felt real, then I must be real too. This must be real too.

I let him go once. I let him leave me. It was the right choice then. But I could not make the same choice now.

I will never let him go. I needed him too much.

\---

_Sakamoto_

For a moment, when he urged me to help him rescue some girl, he was that man again, my lord and leader, the one who stood tall in the face of everything, who shone like a beacon, and died with as much honour as he lived.

A lifetime has passed since I knew him. A lifetime I have lived following no one else but myself. The ideals that Takechi Hanpeita has stood for, the light that his life exuded, I have forgotten it.

Only to see it again.

After my assassination, after time-traveling and waking up in the Heisei era, I sometimes wondered if I had woken up to hell. Another battle, a world full of enemies. I had had to adapt, learning all I could about the technology, dressing in modern clothes, even finding a job that allows me to go anywhere, to ask stupid questions, to infiltrate this strange new world I found myself in. Hell indeed.

This was the first time that I thought the opposite--that this, in fact, was heaven.

Aki was heaven.

\---

_Takechi_

The yukata that Saeki-dono lent him fit him well. He looked himself again. He took off those spectacles and set them on the floor beside his bag and his old clothes. Then he laid down on the futon and deliberately turned away from me.

I turned on my side, and moved closer to his back. He smelled clean, and a little bit like flowers. It was enough to heat my blood. I laid a hand on his waist, and listened to his breath change.

"Are you waiting for permission?" He whispered.

I leaned forward and tasted the back of his neck. It was answer enough. Then when I heard him gasp and felt his back arch, I slid my hand inside the yukata. His flesh was cool but it warmed up under my touch. I ran my fingers down his stomach, even as my mouth found his shoulder under the loosened robe. I gripped his hardness in my hand, and brought him to pleasure in slow strokes, while I took my own pleasure in listening to his murmurs and the hitches in his breaths. 

We were accustomed to doing this in the quiet. What men did with other men, it was common in the life of a samurai. But that didn't mean it wasn't private and precious. Something to be kept to oneself. Something to be hidden carefully, a fine memory, like a good meal, or an excellent weapon. 

Aza never raised his voice, but when he came, his whole body stiffened, and his mouth opened in a soundless gasp. If we were face to face, I'd drink it in. My own flesh was hard to the point of pain, but Aza turned around, and traced a path from my knee up my thigh. He kissed me, a skill he seemed to have honed since we last did this. His fingers and palm on my hardness, his lips and teeth and tongue against my own, it was enough.

The pleasure travelled all the way to the top of my head and down to my curling toes. Aza looked at me with that wicked grin of his, and I kissed it again, softly, fondly.

"Thank you for being here," I told him.

The grin softened into something honest and hesitant. 

"Thank you for coming home to me, Aki."

\---

_Sakamoto_

You could say it was one the greatest love story of my era. But it never made it to the history books. 

I enjoyed reading about my exploits through the eyes of modern historians, people who loved to put together pieces of the puzzle, and solve mysteries, and connect events until you could see a picture of the whole.

None of them had any idea that when I left the Tosa Loyalist Party, I left my heart behind.

But I don't care.

Some things you don't need to write down. It just is. Or was. And will be.

Life is strange. So is love.


End file.
